Watch Sigrid's family  story on WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? on SBS Network October 4th

Sigrid Thornton joins Underbelly 3

The program will screen early next year.  

"Thank goodness women across all fields and spectrums find themselves in positions or have worked their way into positions of authority, an authority greater than men," Thornton said.  

It's the actress's first TV role since her critically acclaimed role as Lola Green in the telemovie Little Oberon in 2005.

"It's more of a character role for me," said Thornton , 50. "She is a very strong, seasoned, plain-clothed policewoman with a great deal of authority at her disposal.

"The characters in Underbelly are never completely black or white, usually shades of grey. I wouldn't say there is a shady side to her character, but to call her a clean-skinned cop would be inaccurate."

Thornton 's brush with prison was in the early 1970s when she was arrested with her mother, Merle, during the Vietnam moratorium demonstrations in Brisbane .

And, while Thornton indulged in a naked scene during her The Blue Room theatre outing in 2003, she says while many females have stripped for Underbelly in the past, she won't be.

"Oh yes, marvellous, I will be dancing on coffee tables!" she jokes. "No, I won't be."

Underbelly: The Golden Mile explores the characters of Sydney 's Kings Cross crime scene in 1989, a time when the cops were bent and the crims were cool.

The program will screen early next year.  

Thornton also judged the Don Kneebone poetry competition at the festival.   

"I function at a fairly high rate of intensity," she says. Not content simply to act or present, Thornton recently stepped down from the board of Film Victoria . "It was very time-consuming. But I feel very strongly about the growth of our cultural life – and the need to have it thrive."  

AUSTRALIA'S sweetheart Sigrid Thornton is returning to the stage

"We grew up in a rather political household as both mum and dad were academics at Queensland University so there was always a lot of discussions going on and a sort of active social conscience," Thornton recalls.

Although Thornton was separated from her mother on arrest, they were reunited in a prison cell for some time before being granted bail and sent home.

"All I can remember was sitting there with Mum discussing what it was like being in a prison cell and reading all the graffiti on the walls," she says.

"That was my last brush with jail until I appeared in Prisoner, which I can say now from my own experience was fairly realistic."

Feminist Merle had already made headlines in Brisbane as one of two women who chained themselves to the bar at the Regatta Hotel in 1965 as a protest against the state's draconian laws banning women from public bars.

Young Sigrid was on the threshold of her own brilliant career with another pioneer, Joan Whalley, who ran the Twelfth Night Theatre Junior Workshop.

"Although there was lots of social and political discussion in our house back then, I think the most important thing our parents gave my brother and I was a commitment to hard work, which has served us well," Thornton says.

"We went to London for two years in the mid-1960s, where I was a member of the Unicorn Theatre, and there was talk of going to RADA, but in the end my career was launched back in Brisbane and in Melbourne with Hector Crawford's TV production company."

Thornton not only appeared in all the top TV shows of the era – Homicide, Division 4 and later Prisoner – but also managed to appear before the Queen in a 1970 production of Brisbane writer Jill Morris's Looking Glass on Yesteryear.

She juggled stage and TV appearances while finishing school at Indooroopilly's St Peter's Lutheran College, then headed south to kick-start a sparkling Australian film and mini-series career, first in the big-screen adaptation of the Henry Handel Richardson classic The Getting of Wisdom then F.J. Holden.

There was also a stint on the British sitcom Father Dear Father in Australia, with original cast member Patrick Cargill, before launching into a series of classic Oz films and mini-series.

Thornton still talks with great affection about starring in productions of The Man From Snowy River , Return to Snowy River as well as the benchmark TV productions of All The Rivers Run and The Light Horsemen.

"They all mean so much to me and I was lucky to work with such wonderful and gracious leading men as Tom Burlinson and Kirk Douglas in Snowy River and John Waters in All the Rivers Run," she recalls.

"All the Rivers Run, which was filmed on the Murray in Port Echuca, Victoria, was a particularly satisfying shoot because of the wonderful location and John (Waters) and I became firm friends after that experience."

The leading man in Thornton 's personal life is husband of 25 years, producer and occasional director Tom Burstall, son of director Tim Burstall (Stork, Alvin Purple, Eliza Fraser) and together the couple have two children, Ben, 21, and Jaz, 15.

She laughs at the term "the Sigrid factor", coined when social and cultural commentator Bernard Salt noted that places where she worked, such as the Victorian coastal area featured in SeaChange, prospered in her wake.

"It's extremely flattering, rather amusing. I wish I'd heard about the 'Sigrid Factor' a long time ago and I'd have bought some stocks and shares as a long-term investment," she laughs.

Talking Heads, which tours for 10 weeks nationally, features Blethyn and Thornton in two Alan Bennett items first produced for TV, Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet, and Her Big Chance.

These pieces are different to those toured by Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzak in 2004; Bennett wrote several monologues under the TV series heading Talking Heads and Blethyn and Thornton had a say in which ones they appear in.

Douglas Kennedy - Brisbane Sunday Mail

Hate to be a drama queen, but things are dire

By Mark Metherell - Sydney Morning Herald
March 29, 2006

A very hot and urgent issue" … Sigrid Thornton puts the case for more support for local drama yesterday.
Photo: Chris Lane

THE actor Sigrid Thornton has gone to Canberra to campaign for Australian culture and television drama, just as Government backbenchers are taking up the cause.

Shortly before Thornton told the National Press Club yesterday that the local film and television industry was in "dire straits", Liberal MPs were in the Coalition party room asking for funding to reinvigorate film and television drama.

Thornton said she had nothing to do with the MPs' calls for cash. But, given the demise of the long-running Blue Heelers series and the drop in local drama on ABC, it was hardly surprising that they were worried, she added.

It was "a very hot and urgent issue" for Australian viewers, who had repeatedly expressed support for local drama and had been left with just four local series: Neighbours, Home and Away, McLeod's Daughters and All Saints.

Earlier, the star of the ratings winner SeaChange blamed the decline in television drama series partly on economic rationalism and the "market-forces mentality" that made the industry risk averse.

SeaChange, she said, hit its stride about three-quarters of the way through the first series, while the popularity of Blue Heelers kicked in only after a long time and some schedule switches.

The Coalition MP Bruce Baird, having been lobbied this week by film producers and writers seeking support from the May budget, argued in the party room for more funds for the ABC. He said later that the station was producing about a seventh of the drama it had been.

The Arts Minister, Rod Kemp, said the Government was aware the film and television industry had been through difficult times, and had provided grants totalling nearly $88 million, over four years, for film production.

The decline in local production "in some part reflects the ABC's incredibly low level of Australian drama", he said.

Speaking on the importance of creativity, Thornton said that trying to validate the arts on the basis of their contribution to the economy was putting the cart before the horse. The arts and humanities were "an end in themselves" and "telling Australian stories" was critical to extending the imagination, particularly of young people.

SIGRID THORNTON ADDRESS TO THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, CANBERRA 

Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Tuesday March 28th   

Good afternoon everyone. I’m delighted to be here today to talk to you about creativity.  My life as an actor regularly engages me in creative work, but I’d like to discuss this rather slippery subject in much broader terms.

 A few days ago I was driving along with my fourteen-year-old daughter Jaz and she was talking about the film of  the book Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta.  Looking for Alibrandi is a contemporary Australian teen novel about coming of age and self-identity, which was made into a feature film a few years ago. Jaz was commenting that the film is much more subtle and multi-layered than American films.  

Almost all films seen by Australian teens are American these days and according to Jaz, they have a standard formula--- boy ignores ugly, nerdy, very intelligent girl who wears glasses. But by the end of the film she has taken off her glasses and he has fallen in love with her for her brains not her beauty. The stretch is that the ugly, nerdy,very intelligent girl is always played by a beautiful young American ingénue. And any fourteen-year-old with half a brain can see through that.  

Jaz commented on how good it was to see the Looking for Alibrandi story playing out in a familiar cultural framework. I explained to her that that’s why I’ve been involved in trying to increase support for the making of films that tell Australian stories–––because they extend the part of the world we know in our imagination. They enrich our way of seeing it.  

Jaz said it’s not just its Australian-ness that makes this film better, it’s the layers of meaning in it that aren’t explored in American films. We agreed that the formulaic American films she was talking about are made for a quick market result, not imaginative depth.  

We went on to discuss how wonderful it is that each person’s imagination is unique and matches that of no other person in the world ever. Here we were touching on what is special about the arts. What they present is the subjective world, that unique personal inner world. For every individual, this is where emotions and intentions, perceptions and understandings are located.

 The writer of Looking for Alibrandi creates the book from her unique imagination; Jaz has to exercise her own unique imagination in reading it. The book guides Jaz in extending her imagination.  

In any art, a spark passes from the artist’s imagination through the art-work to ignite the imagination of the appreciator. Not just in literature, but in drama, dance, music, paintings, sculpture and so on.

 Time spent with the arts either as practitioner or as appreciator is a potent kind of training in extending one’s imagination in the direction of creativity.

 Imagination is a basic human faculty that allows us to bring into our minds the ‘maybes’ and the ‘what ifs?’. These ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs?’ could take the form of visualizations or  complex propositions. There are lots of ways of imagining. And imagination is not necessarily confined to human beings. Presumably a cat has some sort of imagination of what the mouse he has lost sight of might be up to. You can tell by the way he stalks it. Imagination is used in this low-key kind of way by us all, all the time, but its potential as a creative faculty is almost unlimited.  

The extraordinary creativity that came from Eistein’s imagination resulted in the theory of relativity.  Imagining the unrealized possibilities of the world resulted in the play Hamlet and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

 But how do we work from the low end towards the high creative end of our imagination?  

I was telling you about my literary conversation with my daughter mainly to emphasize that imagination is something each of us can get practice at and improve on.  

The direct experience of other creative minds that we receive from the arts is one of the most important ways we can develop our imagination.

 So if the arts are so critical to our imaginative and creative development, we need to recognise their role in our cultural development as well. Works of art communicate in terms of long traditions and cultural settings. If a person has no entrée into the relevant traditions and culture of a particular art work, however imaginatively attentive they try to be, it is likely they’ll misinterpret it.

 So---if you don’t speak English you’ll be severely disadvantaged in understanding Patrick White or David Williamson. If you’ve never heard of Ned Kelly, you won’t catch much of the symbolic import of Sidney Nolan‘s Ned Kelly paintings. This brings us to education and its role in enhancing our understanding of the culture we share with our creative artists.

 In Australia in the last twenty years there has been a concerted effort in education to increase the number of people qualified to advance the economic success of our country. Economics and business studies have taken precedence--- finance, banking, risk management, IT studies and so on. 

There has been much less concern for the development of skills which favour the flourishing of curiosity, imagination, innovative thought and action––– it is fair to say there have been areas of serious decline in that kind of education. Though pure science has also suffered, I am thinking especially of the humanities, such as languages, history, philosophy, literature, music and the visual arts.  

The humanities are of course the studies of cultures and their languages and arts. It is essential for this knowledge to be available to people who will contribute to our cultural life through sharing their understanding and appreciation of the arts. But (and this takes us back to my conversation with my daughter) these educational needs start well before tertiary level, indeed they should begin in the cradle and at early childhood development level.  

Training and encouragement in extending the use of the imagination is the path to greater creativity not just in the humanities, but also in the science-based disciplines. In fact, imagination is the bridging faculty between the two directions. If imagination is flourishing, the bridges will be built.

Much of the recent research on policy in the humanities, arts and social sciences is concerned with what can be got out of them. How they might further economic development. What they can contribute to innovation or design excellence. What they can add to the competitive edge of Australia in the world economy.  

In broad terms the answer is obviously ‘a great deal’. They already contribute enormously to the Australian economy and their potential for a greater contribution is substantial. So the ‘economy is the main game’ approach can be used effectively in the service of strategic arguments. Arguments for policies that will ensure the continuing development of the arts, humanities and social sciences.  

Indeed if I have rightly understood this is an area in which CHASS is already successful and is likely to become more so.  But in a broader context I think it is important to be aware of the limitations of the ‘economy is number one’ approach. Trying to validate the arts by their contribution or potential contribution to the economy is putting the cart before the horse. We need to understand the intrinsic importance of the arts and humanities. They are an end in themselves. Without their being treated as an independently vital organism of our culture, they will lose their primary purpose. Then they will be useless even for secondary purposes. Creativity is the main game.

 The arts have always and everywhere had some level of dependence on patronage, sponsorship or government support. So in demanding or imagining market success we may well be structuring a negative economic effect on the arts rather than a positive arts effect on the economy. These are important questions of Australian public policy, and I stand for increased public support for the arts.

 I have been talking about creativity and the necessary conditions for its development at quite a general level. It’s an extremely broad topic that sends tentacles in all directions, so I though I’d continue  the discussion by defining what I have to say in terms of  a few particular issues relevant to my own experience.

 Which brings us to the film and television industry. Although it is no exaggeration to say that the industry is in dire straights, and particularly that our television drama is dying on the vine, I believe the industry is nevertheless a particularly poignant example of the interaction of market forces and artistic effort.  

On the one hand it actually is an industry, which employs large numbers of people in a sophisticated and varied skills base.  It also has wide market with most of the population paying to see films screened and watching the small screen. But on the other hand it is deeply concerned with those intrinsic values that belong to the creative arts. The work of production is a complex collaboration of artists, technical experts and people with skills in administration, finance, risk management. It is a microcosm of the interaction of and tension between art and finance.  

And there is the pressure to flatten out the content of a film to cater to overseas markets. An example would be to change words in dialogue to get rid of something Australian that an American audience (the audience that makes the biggest market) might not follow; to cut out some Australian practice or joke that wouldn’t ‘travel’.  

It doesn’t take a lot of this till the audience has little sense of the story happening in any particular place or the characters belonging to any specifiable cultural identity. The colour is bleached out. When my daughter commented on how good it was to see scenes happening in familiar places, she could have added ‘with characters that belong to our familiar culture’.

  The idea of a ‘global village’ sounds warm and inclusive, but do we really want a flattened imagination, a sort of Basic English or even Esperanto way of looking at the world? 

Cultural diversity, both within our own country and in what we are able to see of the wider world, is a powerful stimulus to imagination and creativity. Some of the most civilizing effects in world history have come from openness and communication between differing and distinctive cultures.  

Over the years I have been involved in many documentary productions. They have drawn on diverse areas of specialized expertise including pure science disciplines, technologies, Aboriginal cultures and social sciences.  

Documentary film occurs to me as an area well worthy of attention by CHASS. Many dedicated independent documentary makers do very valuable work in making fields of specialization accessible to non-experts. Their work is an art form in itself and it often constitutes the cross-over between arts and sciences which is at the centre of CHASS’s work. Yet it is extremely difficult for these independent producers to make a living in any way commensurate with their skills, not to mention the difficulty in distributing their films.

 Despite the commercial pressures, at its best, film and television production is a poignant example of what can be achieved creatively when people reach out across the barriers between their different professions, expertise and mindsets. When a unity of understanding and purpose is achieved to good effect. At these times, film-making process could act as a model for symbiosis which dissolves barriers, for creativity across the disciplines.  

How is it that the barriers between disciplines, mindsets and professions can be so powerful? One reason is that in this time-poor world, rapid career advancement has become a higher priority and over-specialization is the most expedient means to achieving it.

Another reason is that academic institutions can encourage the preservation of these disciplinary barriers. Relaxing the definition of any given discipline can represent a career threat to the old guard.  

Earlier this year I launched Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers; it’s a book I have taken a particular interest in. It reaches across disciplines, nations, economies, cultures. The Weather Makers is about the human role in climate change, where that is leading us, and how it might be possible to change direction and avert disastrous consequences for humans and other species. This very complex topic demands high levels of cross-over and lateral and innovative thinking about some fundamental issues. Science, technology, economics and social and cultural development are all involved. A topic of critical importance has found in Tim a person of unusually flexible mind.

He is able to cut through technical talk to express central scientific concepts in language accessible to non-expert curious readers. This gives him a freedom to move between sciences which don’t always talk to one another and to explore how they can be fitted together to answer hard questions. His is an imagination which seems to see paths that cross over as clearly as paths that diverge. He is able to draw on literary and Aboriginal sources as happily as political and social ones.  

It is a very timely book, and yet in spite of Tim’s international reputation as a scientist, he has not escaped the entrenched prejudice against the creative person who is a hard-line boundary-crosser. Although The Weather Makers has created a lot of interest in Australia , I have the impression that its importance has been more generously recognized overseas where Tim is now touring and speaking to large audiences. In fact Tim recently appeared together with David Attenborough in front of an audience of 2,000 at St. Paul ’s Cathedral. Attenborough is also a boundary-crosser and obviously recognizes a kindred spirit.  

It’s important that we cherish, encourage and socially validate successful efforts in exploring symbiosis. I’ve at times been privileged in film and stage work to experience the creative rush it brings.  

And there are hopeful signs. Glyn Davis, the recently appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, has announced that he hopes to introduce a generalist degree which will be taken by all undergraduates before they move on to their specialist studies---whether based in the sciences or in humanities, social sciences or arts. Developing young talents would hopefully form friendships and understanding of others who were to embark on different professional paths. And everyone would have the opportunity to gain an entrée into the imaginative bases of our culture.

 The initiatives being promoted by CHASS will also help to bridge the disciplinary boundaries. At the same time they can provide a much-needed impetus for a knowledge-based economy and society. If they are able to  achieve this, they will  enrich the lives of all Australians and help preserve our distinctive Australian culture, imagination and creativity.

Sigrid loses hair for role

April 10, 2005

SIGRID Thornton has cast aside any notion of vanity and shaved her head for one of the most dramatic roles of her career.

In a move that would challenge most actors, Thornton has sacrificed her raven locks to play a grandmother battling cancer in the Nine Network telemovie Little Oberon.

Thornton plays Lola Green, the mother of Georgie, who is played by former Blue Heeler Tasma Walton. Walton plays the mother of Natasha (Brittany Byrnes).

In the inter-generational story, mother and daughter are estranged, with Thornton's character having never met her granddaughter. Her illness brings the fractured family back together.

The production was shooting around the picturesque township of Marysville, in Victoria, last week.

As these exclusive pictures show, Thornton's transformation from glamorous sophisticate to a grandmother battling serious health problems is stunning.

Clad in a woollen beanie, with dark sunglasses and wearing little make-up, Thornton's presence on the set was haunting.

Production sources say she had no qualms about shaving her head for the sake of authenticity.

Little Oberon will screen on Nine later this year.

SIGRID THORNTON TO STAR IN 'LITTLE OBERON'
NINE'S NEW TELEMOVIE STARTS PRODUCTION

The Nine Network announced today that leading Australian actress Sigrid Thornton has been signed for the starring role in the upcoming telemovie Little Oberon.

The mystery-thriller, which begins filming this week in the Victorian town of Marysville, will also star Tasma Walton (Blue Heelers, Postcard Bandit) and Brittany Byrnes (Swimming Upstream) as well as Peter Rowsthorn (Kath and Kim), Helen Dallimore, Brett Climo, Alexander Capelli and Sullivan Stapleton.

Little Oberon marks the welcome return of Thornton in a starring role following the hit series SeaChange.

Thornton will portray the ailing eccentric artist Lola Green who lives in the sleepy mountain town of Little Oberon. Sparks fly when Lola is visited by her estranged and tempestuous daughter Georgie (Walton) and rebellious granddaughter Natasha (Byrnes) and the tiny community is woken with a jolt.

There are secrets in the town including a long unsolved disappearance. Nothing is as it seems as magic stalks the streets and love, lust and mystery collide while the Greens - grandmother, mother and daughter - are at the heart of everything.

"The script is one of the best pieces of drama I've read in a long time," Thornton says. "I'm looking forward to the challenge of playing Lola and working with such an amazing ensemble cast."

Produced by Christie Films and Fremantle Media for the Nine Network, Little Oberon is written by award-winning scriptwriter Peter Gawler and directed by Kevin Carlin (The Extra). The telemovie is produced by Susan Bower (McLeod's Daughters). Executive producer and co-creator is Stanley Walsh.

Nine Network Director of Drama, Posie Graeme-Evans, said today: "This is a dream project featuring one of the strongest casts ever assembled for an Australian telemovie. It is set to be a wonderful piece of television."

Little Oberon will premiere on the Nine Network in the second half of 2005.

 ABC's forthcoming MDA mini series featuring Sigrid as guest lead is now in post production.

Sigrid receives a Mo Award for best actress in a leading role for THE BLUE ROOM.

Now you see her

December 16 2002

Sigrid Thornton is preparing to bare all - for the first time - in The Blue Room. And her biggest worry is what the fruitman will think, writes Michelle Griffin.

Let's get the rude bits out of the way right now. Sigrid Thornton wasn't concerned about the tiny nude scene when she agreed to play the female lead in The Blue Room. Well, not at first. It was a David Hare play, for heaven's sake, a serious work about sexuality, intimacy and class. But the only thing any of the initial coverage mentioned was The Nude Scene, as played in London by Our Nicole, and about to be realised onstage by Our Sigrid.

"I'm getting more nervous as the thing builds up," she admits over coffee and porridge at the cafe near her gymnasium in Melbourne. "With my actress friends saying, 'Gee, you're brave. I wouldn't be getting my kit off,' I start thinking, 'Shit, maybe I should be nervous.' It's a bit strange when my local fruitman at the market says, 'Gee, I'm going to come and see your play.' That's when I start to think, 'Hadn't thought of that.' Silly stuff."

Thornton is in rehearsal mode right now, trying to shut out all the other distractions. "I really am focused so bloody hard on the play. I am trying to put all my nervous tension into that basket. If I can get that right, get it half right, I'll be very happy. The other stuff [nudity] is so not what it's about. It's insane."

The Blue Room (which opens in Melbourne on January 15) is an opportunity for Thornton to show her versatility as well as her assets. It's a sexed-up game of six degrees of separation - a prostitute solicits a taxi driver, who seduces an au pair, who sleeps with her employer's son, who has a fling with a married woman, and so on, until we're back to the prostitute. Thornton plays all the female characters and Marcus Graham plays all the men.

For all the fuss about Nicole Kidman's nude scene, all theatregoers ever saw was a bottom, upper stage left, in dim light, for a few seconds. (You can see more by renting Billy Bathgate.) What people don't realise is that Kidman's co-star, Iain Glen, had far more nude time onstage, full frontal and doing cartwheels. Perhaps the buzz about The Blue Room should focus on how much Marcus Graham (who, interestingly, dated Kidman before her Hollywood success) is going to reveal. Thornton giggles. "I think people will be terribly disappointed." An actor mate has suggested a solution to her: "Just get up onstage, before the play begins. Come out on your own, take all your clothes off and do a little dance... tra-la-la, now you've seen it all! And everyone who wants to see the play can stay and everyone who's finished can go home." Thornton is laughing quite hard now. "I thought it was marvellous. I'm almost tempted to do it."

Perhaps some of the fuss is because this will be Thornton's first nude scene in a 30-year career that started when she was just 13. This is something of an achievement in an era when most female actors, sooner rather than later, are obliged to disrobe. "I worked on a film that will remain nameless ... [and] they wanted some more sauce, and I just wouldn't do it, it was completely inappropriate for the film. There was quite a lot of pressure on me at that time to create an international profile for that picture, so I'm glad I didn't do it."

Hmm, my best guess would be 1979's Snapshot, her first starring role, as a hairdresser who becomes an international model, and then there's some stuff about spies, which is extremely confusing. But for most of the 1980s it was rare to get a glimpse of Thornton's ankles, let alone anything else, as she galloped through the historical productions that dominated film and television back then. Bruce Beresford's The Getting Of Wisdom (1977) was her first period-costume film, then came The Last Outlaw (1980) and Outbreak Of Love (1981), 1915 and The Man From Snowy River (1982) and, of course, All The Rivers Run in 1984, the biggest Australian miniseries ever. Not to mention films such as The Lighthorsemen (1987) and Snowy River II (1988) and a three-year stint on the American western Guns Of Paradise (1988-1990). Indeed, I was surprised to discover it was Some Other Actor (Mary Larkin) in the 1978 convict miniseries Against The Wind. I'd just superimposed Thornton's face on to every Australian period drama I'd ever watched.

This is unfair to her work and range, and when miniseries flatlined in the 1990s recession, period became passe and she sometimes struggled to find work. "When my career started taking off, it was 80 per cent period drama," Thornton points out. "We were having this love affair with our history. The fact that I was in so many period gigs - the industry dictated the period. Then we really decided we didn't like that anymore, which seemed to be just as silly as embracing it so totally in the first place."

Looking back at those roles, it's striking how many of them were strong, feminist protagonists - not the pliant ingenues you might imagine would form the body of work of an actor as beautiful as Thornton. Her 19th-century women were invariably strong-minded, independent types, cantering around on horses, demanding an education and captaining that riverboat on their own. Even in Guns Of Paradise, she played a female banker. Her resume lists a portfolio of professions from nurse and teacher to astronaut and, of course, magistrate Laura Gibson on SeaChange, the ABC show that at its peak was more popular than Blue Heelers and pulled in around 2 million viewers a week.

The Blue Room is the first time Thornton has been cast as a prostitute. Thornton says, very carefully, that, yes, her feminism and her politics have influenced the roles she chooses to play. "There have been issues..." She trails off, thinking through her answer. "This is all about the luxury of being able to afford the choice. I can't say, 'I will never do X.' I might need to do it. I might suddenly be broke and on the streets, you don't know."

The trouble with interviewing actors as experienced as Thornton is that they know exactly how their words will come across in print. She is a warm, thoughtful and careful interviewee, as anyone might be after 20 years of profiles. Thornton has long since stopped inviting journalists to her inner-city Melbourne home. She tries to keep private the stories of her family - husband Tom Burstall, a producer, and children Ben, 17, and Jaz, 10 - although she can't help but talk about striving for a balance between family and career.

"My work life is my other life, my mistress," she says. But she doesn't want to keep talking about her family in print because "it devalues it somehow. It's hard to control one's public image, just as I'm trying to do now. I'm trying to give you an impression of who I am but keep something in reserve, which is natural, but also be as open with you within the confines. I try to conduct myself that way all the time. You can keep some boundaries on what you do and don't talk about."

So we talk twice at the cafe near Thornton's gym. Her accent swings from an almost plummy tone used for discussing things seriously (she uses the pronoun "one" in several sentences) and a broader tone for talking about jokes and mates. She's a doll-like 158cm with a large, expressive face. At 43, Thornton has the same tiny figure she had at 23 and, if anything, looks more handsome now she isn't so baby-faced. Instead, she's all cheekbones and eyes and slicked-back hair, and a mouth that morphs from the pursed lips of deep thought to a face-splitting grin.

She wolfs down a bowl of porridge and fruit, but the secrets of her trim figure are entirely unsurprising - you'd be slim, too, if you ate sensibly for 20 years and worked out for an hour every day. Even when she was in LA, working 16-hour days on Guns Of Paradise, she'd come home and do a session in the home gym. "I'm pretty good and I've become better at it with more maturity," she says. "I think I understand better if you keep a certain amount of tension in the cord, it'll be easier to get back on when you're working again. That's what I found with The Blue Room. I've been training hard anyway, so I haven't altered anything in preparation."

Thornton is the second child of left-wing academics, who must have stood out in the ultra-conservative suburban milieu of 1960s Brisbane. Her father, Neil Thornton, is a philosopher. Her mother, Merle, is a prominent feminist who was fighting for equal rights long before The Female Eunuch came along. In April 1965, when Thornton was six, her mother made headlines around the world when she and her friend Ro Bogner chained themselves to the bar at the Regatta Hotel and ordered lemonades to protest against Queensland laws that banned women from drinking in public bars. Questions were raised in parliament: who was looking after their children? Should they be taken into care? The furore created the publicity Merle Thornton needed to establish the Equal Opportunity for Women Association, which campaigned against the ban on married women working in the public service.

Little Sigrid was too young to understand why her mother was in the newspaper for ordering lemonade. "I certainly realised it was a big deal. I was very proud of her, but I didn't realise how brave it was. I was always brought up with the notion, as I grew into a young woman, that I could do anything I wanted to do, and that my mother was devoting her life and energy towards making sure women young and old would have the same opportunities as everyone else."

But as Thornton grew up, she found she sometimes chafed against her mother's ideals. "We were all supposed to burn our bras but I'm just developing and all of my friends are wearing bras and I'd quite like to have one, too. It was a bit of a push-me, pull-you experience." It wasn't so much that her parents forbade her to be girlie, more that she didn't want to disappoint them: "In my case, it was shaving my legs." Thornton suddenly acts out the determined teenager she was: "I'm going to do it. I am going to do it." She slams her fist on the table. "I want to shave my legs, I don't care what you say!" Then she slips out of character. "It was a major event for me. I now understand extreme measures were required in those days. We haven't reached equality yet ... I'm much more into the idea of partnership between men and women rather than equal rights, but we didn't have the luxury of discussing these things back then."

The whole family was arrested at a Vietnam moratorium in 1972 when Thornton was 13. "It was probably the last sit-down march before the war ended. It started to get quite heavy, quite scary for a kid. I remember police dragging people off. We were separated. Father and son [her older brother Harry] were dragged off. We [Sigrid and Merle] were treated rather more genteelly, but we were put in the paddy wagon, spent the night in the watchhouse, all that stuff. They gave us a separate cell; that was pretty wild."

It was at this time that Crawfords discovered Thornton at an open audition at her local youth theatre troupe and cast her in Homicide as the daughter from a broken marriage. "I got shot and killed; it was very dramatic. I think it was the father who shot me and I died in my brother's arms." She'd been treading the boards since she was eight and already knew she wanted to be an actor. "To go to RADA, darling, to work in the-ah-tah," she says, rolling her eyes. For the rest of her schooling, she juggled homework and work in Melbourne-based TV shows, flying from Brisbane with her mother when a role came up.

Thornton says she knows there are some gaps in her education, but her academic parents encouraged her nevertheless: "They felt I gained more than I lost." At 17, she dropped out of university after the first semester of a drama course and moved to Sydney to pursue an acting career, appearing in three films almost straightaway. By 19, she was a household name, with roles in Prisoner and The Young Doctors, a lead in a film, and those historical miniseries just starting to happen.

Thornton didn't hit a dry patch until early 1990, when she and Burstall returned to Melbourne from LA to have their second child. Guns Of Paradise wound up after three years, just a few episodes short of the syndication rights that would have kept Thornton in royalties. Back home, everyone had tipped Our Sigrid for the kind of international success Our Nicole eventually achieved, but Thornton didn't have a reason to hang around LA. "It presents as relaxed and laid-back but it's pretty tight and wound-up," says Thornton. "It's a big well of intensity and ambition and it leads to a really unbalanced lifestyle." Thornton says she was "a bit like the businessman who is gone before the kids get up and home just before they go to bed".

But Australia was in the grip of a recession that had crippled local film and television production. So Thornton took her first break in her adult career and spent a couple of years raising the kids and taking the odd gig, such as presenting movies on pay TV. She started to show her mature range in the role of the lawyer investigating child pornography in the telemovie Whipping Boy, but it took three auditions to convince the SeaChange producers she was the right actor to play Laura Gibson. There was the crinoline problem. Thornton says that being really well known can be an issue in an industry where everyone wants to discover someone new. Producers worried that she was too famous to become Laura. "Sue Masters [ABC's then head of drama] wanted her right from the start," remembers SeaChange creator and writer Andrew Knight. "I think we just didn't realise what her range was, how good she was at comedy."

Thornton has that natural warmth we've taken to calling emotional intelligence, the ability to connect with others. "SeaChange wouldn't have been possible without Sigrid," says Knight. "Not just because of the work she did as an actress, but because of who she is as a person. When you have a long-running drama, people are going to have their issues and problems, but Sigrid kept everything together, kept it all centred." When Knight's niece wandered lost across the set during work experience, it was Thornton who stopped to talk with the girl for half an hour. Actor and director Kaarin Fairfax says they struck up a friendship when Thornton approached her on Lygon Street to say how much she liked Fairfax's singing trio, The Droolettes. "It was the first positive reinforcement we ever had," remembers Fairfax.

"I've always been a fairly socialised person," says Thornton. "I've always been reasonably at ease in a social setting. I had a conversation with my mother the other day about how much of that is nature and how much is nurture." But Thornton says being nice to everyone can be hard work at times: "I find social interaction very enjoyable but really tiring. Some people are quite relaxed socially, and I'm probably not, although I pretend I am."

Since SeaChange wrapped in 2000, Thornton has been working quietly on a few film and television projects (including a role as mayor Wilson in Disney's Inspector Gadget 2, due to be released in 2003). She's also a force in the Victorian film industry - she was chair of the Victorian Film and Television Taskforce, which recommended sweeping changes to funding and support for local production, and now she's on the board of Film Victoria. "We need Australian films, genuinely Australian films," she says. "I felt we had to do something about it."

Not that people ever forgot Thornton, but SeaChange has really cemented her image in the public imagination. No, she says, she isn't anonymous on the streets anymore, although people sometimes can't remember why they know her. "My friends notice it more than me," she says. "I mostly screen it out." She can't take public transport anymore, which she regrets. "You're just sitting there [as they stare], you're too exposed."

She's an A-list name now. She comes to the interview at the end of a hard week at the Melbourne Cup Carnival. She says she sees the invitations to the marquees as "part of the business, really." Like retired swimmer Susie O'Neill, actor Rebecca Gibney and singer Marina Prior, Thornton has become one of those well-liked celebs who drive nice cars courtesy of Saab (who must have been very happy with the deal over Cup week, as Thornton's name, face, funky hats and Vixen outfits were mentioned absolutely everywhere). No doubt those people skills were worked hard in the tents where everyone would know her name, and she had to try to remember everyone else's.

You wouldn't call Thornton happy-go-lucky, with her disciplined life and organised check lists. She says she's never really happy with her work, either. "I don't think it's right to be entirely happy," she says. "I hate the idea of becoming too satisfied with where I'm at. You've got to keep moving forward. I think if you stop doing that, you 'rut-i-fy' yourself and I think it's very dangerous."

Thornton is the kind of interviewee who notices that your haircut has changed over the course of the week, and who asks questions, too, if you're not careful. At the end of the session, she kisses you goodbye like an old friend, as the cool cafegoers try not to stare. She's not at all phony, and more power to her for keeping in control. But at the end of the interview, I want to creep back to the table and dust for fingerprints, to see if she's left any trace at all.